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On Sept 20, 50 environmental consultants, real estate brokers, attorneys, and local government officials from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania attended a workshop at MDE’s Montgomery Park location to talk about emerging trends in the Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP). The focus was to learn about the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act and its importance to the VCP, as well as changes in the program’s procedural process.
“This workshop is an opportunity to provide VCP participants – or future participants, an understanding of how this program is evolving to meet the needs of Maryland’s communities, ” said MDE Secretary Kendl P. Philbrick. “The Brownfields program is on the rise. We need creative ways to take our urban and suburban properties that are already vacant and bring them back into productive use. Over the past two years participation has increased by 64 new applications – exceeding our goal across the state.”
With population growth projected to increase by 1.1 million people by 2030, Maryland is encouraging businesses to enter the VCP program through brownfields redevelopment. It creates environmentally friendly and cost effective options for redevelopment, and helps communities by reducing the number of vacant or underutilized properties.
Uniform Environmental Covenants Act
This year, Maryland’s General Assembly authorized yet another tool to ensure that redeveloped properties are maintained in a manner protective of human health and the environment. With the enactment of the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (UECA), the VCP has one more mechanism to assure that land use controls will be enforced. These covenants, which can be signed by the department, local government, adjoining property owners or other any other party, give MDE recourse to assure protection of human health and the environment.
If MDE decides that participants in this covenant have broken controls, it now has the authority to not only collect fees, but to pursue litigation for cleanup. UECA relies on the common law base, and re-creates it to control the use of contaminated real estate, perpetually if necessary, while allowing that property to be conveyed from one person to another subject to those controls.
MDE, as well as other governmental agencies and private parties, can also sign the environmental covenant to assure that land use controls are maintained into the future.
The MDE sponsored workshop was an overwhelming success. The 50-seat capacity was filled within seven days. And due to popular demand MDE plans to hold another workshop in November and a third workshop in the spring. For more information on Maryland’s VCP program, or on upcoming workshops, contact Jim Carroll, Program Administrator, Environmental Restoration and Redevelopment, at
James.Carroll@maryland.gov.
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